


The Nature of Wolves

by Blacksquirrel



Category: Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Genre: 18th Century, Character of Color, Established Relationship, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Sea Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-14
Updated: 2008-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:25:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/pseuds/Blacksquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mani teaches Fronsac about the nature of wolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> These factoids accurately describe real world wolf behavior, to the best of my wikipedia-derived knowledge. Enormous thanks are owed to my wonderful beta kitsune13 who always catches my lazy wording and patches it back together again.

**The Nature of Wolves **

Wolves are Loyal. Wolves Prefer Psychological Warfare. 

A sudden lurch sent a single coin rolling off the edge of the gaming table to clatter noisily on the floor, but the commotion offered no respite from the conversation of the Duc de Bar, who droned on with greater monotony than the steady splash of waves against the hull. Fronsac did not bend to retrieve it, and Mani frowned from across the cabin. Since the Duc had begun bemoaning the King’s disappointment with the war and the taint that would attach to them by association when they returned to court, Mani noted that Fronsac had failed to drink, raise the bid, or nod at appropriate pauses in the diatribe. Another hand lost, another hand dealt, and still Fronsac could do nothing but shove his coin forward mechanically and clench his cards in increasingly visible unease.

Perhaps noticing something amiss, the Duc leaned toward Fronsac and continued, saying, “Possibly you, among all of us, will draw him out with your clippings and curiosities.” Gesturing expansively he advised, “As the King has become exceedingly fond of exotic fauna, it would behoove every gentleman here to remember the Chevalier’s name. Yet, I believe that you too,” he paused to poke a finger in Fronsac’s direction, “will find him a changed man. Whatever closeness you once shared will have fled in the wake of the assassination attempt. Such dreadful business. Only those of us present through that trying time find favor these days. And, now another tragedy befalls our King. As dearly as he held New France I just do not see how he will survive the blow. Why I - Oh!” A flurry of tossed cards interrupted the self-congratulatory lamentation, and for the first time in hours silence enveloped the table in the wake of Fronsac’s abrupt exit. Mani’s eyes traced the tense lines of Fronsac’s retreating back. Crossing the room to return to their cabin, Mani passed the table and grimly noted the swift escalation of preposterous explanations for the spectacle.

Even from the corridor Mani could hear the vehement pounding of pacing feet. He peered through the gap where their door had been left ajar, and saw a perfect picture of agitation; Fronsac, with loose hair and dangling cravat, grumbled to himself in gravelly tones as he haunted the narrow path between their beds, across which lay strewn the rumpled mass of his abandoned coat and vest. Mani stepped into the cabin, closing the door firmly behind him, and reached out to capture Fronsac’s pointedly gesticulating hands.

For a moment Fronsac tensed even further, as if to lash out at the intrusion, but as Mani’s features registered amidst the haze of his fury he relaxed into the encircling hands. “Did you hear him?” Fronsac demanded, “Carrying on as though New France were a bauble and the King a petulant child. Does he not know what it cost us?” Eyes alight and cheeks crimson, he squeezed Mani’s hands and shuddered. “And then to speak of court,” he continued incredulously, “to exploit and dismiss my life’s work in one breath as the fancy strikes, and to press even now for political advantage, as though such machinations could retain any meaning in the face of blood and screams and the yawning abyss of death.” He gasped and mutely shook his head, as though a resurgence of horror had trapped the rest of his words deep in his chest.

Mani looked away and ran his thumbs in soothing circles across Fronsac’s wrists, then shook his head to dislodge Fronsac’s invocation of the war. “It is because you recognize their petty absorptions for pretense that you can invoke their rules and rituals without letting them into your heart. Inside you may laugh at their hypocrisy and rage at their malevolence.” Mani dropped his hands to reach into his jacket pocket and withdraw one of the scattered playing cards, which he pressed insistently into Fronsac’s palm, “But I need to know that you’ll be able to play this game, for me.”

“For you?” Fronsac asked, brows raised in startled confusion.

Mani tilted his head sharply in scrutiny, insisting, “You may retreat to your childhood home, withdraw from society completely, and live all your days quietly on the yield of your land, but I have few options in a country so foreign to me.” In the jerky shake of Fronsac’s head Mani read a rising protest declaring “I would never,” but he pressed on, “Then never let it come to that. While we remain together your position protects us, but only if you maintain its value.”

Mani skimmed one finger down Fronsac’s open collar, over the ridge of his clavicle, across his breast bone to the ridge of the still healing wound which had so nearly taken his life. Circling the angry scar tissue Mani allowed the memory of those days to wash over them both, the stench of carnage on the battlefield, the sting of freezing rain on their faces when Mani carried Fronsac to safety, and the sickening tang of blood everywhere. Regretfully but with resolve, Mani spoke the irrevocable words, “Their sharp tongues will be the arrow that pierces me,” he said, and Fronsac inhaled sharply, then closed his eyes in shame. He lifted Mani’s hand from his chest and kissed the knuckles in repentance, then he whispered, “Forgive me.”

Mani’s arms wound around him, and his warm breath dropped an absolution into Fronsac’s ear, “Do not be sorry. Just atone.”

The following evening when the ship’s passengers retired after dinner Fronsac approached the gaming table with a sardonic smile and a bottle of port gifted to him by the Governor of Montreal. “My apologies for yesterday’s incident, gentlemen,” he offered as he smoothly insinuated himself into the conversation and an empty chair. “An unfortunate combination of sea sickness and excessive spirits. Tonight, I shall pour from my own stock to avoid any further unpleasantness,” and he filled the set of empty glasses at the table’s corner. Offering one to the Duc de Bar, he said, “To your health,” and congratulated himself for suppressing all outward hints of irony. The Duc sipped suspiciously, weighing his presence with a wary gaze. Fronsac, all earnestness in appearance, felt the prickle of Mani’s watchful presence from the other side of the room. Finally, the Duc nodded. “An excellent vintage,” he declared, and the game went on.

Wolves Learn to Stifle Their Cries as Cubs, but as Adults a Pack Will Vocalize at Dawn and Dusk

They snuck away from the other passengers after dinner to reward themselves for a week of well behaved mingling. Bundled in coats and scarves, they shuffled along the deck to find a quiet stretch of railing beyond the night watchman’s sight. Settling in to the muffled languor of the crew’s night routine, they peered into the last glow of twilight, straining to make out the dark curve of waves rippling off into the distance. Fronsac removed a flask from his jacket pocket to absently unscrew and retighten its cap, but he did not drink. Mani spread his fingers wide where they rested against the railing, contracted them toward his palm, then stretched them out again, as Fronsac had seen him do in preparation to connect with the Earth through meditation. He wondered, suddenly, if Mani missed the ground. Then he tipped the flask back and drank, cursing himself, because Mani had far more to long for than dirt.

“Who do you miss?” Fronsac asked, and the words floated gently between them, buoyed by the encroaching darkness. Water lapped against the hull below and the moon peaked from cloud cover above, while the question still resonated in their ears.

Finally summoning the words, Mani began, “I miss Anies, who helped me prepare to honor the Earth’s sleep each year. I miss Thayendanegea, who preyed with me before battle. I miss Onwari who wove a beautiful blanket for me after I ensured the safe delivery of her child. I miss Kateri who I revived from a grave illness, and I miss Ahyouwaighs who I could not revive.” He paused, as if numbering the dead, though he had not given voice to even a fraction of their number. He continued at last, “I miss my chiefs and the council. I miss my mother, though she is long dead.” Mani exhaled on a breathy sigh, releasing these names into the keeping of the still night air. Fronsac barely caught himself before responding “Amen” to the litany out of reflex, though the word had gone sour in his mouth years ago. Instead he quietly pondered aloud, “No wife or lover? No brother, or cousin, or child?”

Fronsac felt Mani shift at his side and, though he could no longer make out Mani’s features, he turned to face him. Their hands slid together upon the railing. Mani’s fingers found the flask’s little silver cap, pulling it from Fronsac’s grasp to play along its warmed ridges, then returning it to Fronsac’s palm, only to reclaim it once more. He sighed, and his voice carried a wistful smile as he said, “My mother carried no other child, and many took that as an early sign that I had been touched. Because the spirit worked in me I belonged to everyone in the village, and they belonged to me. While I shared pleasures of the body and spirit with many for a time, I lived as one apart, and none contemplated living with me on such a singular path.”

Fronsac’s hand sprang shut, ensnaring Mani’s dancing fingers, and they tugged at each other half-heartedly until Mani escaped with the cap. He patted his way across Fronsac’s torso to find his other arm and followed it down. Mani worried the metal of the flask’s opening in slick little circles, and then screwed the cap tight. Extricating it from Fronsac’s grasp, he slid the flask back into the hidden pocket inside Fronsac’s coat. Letting his chilled hand linger there against the heat of Fronsac’s chest, Mani asked, “And who has missed you?”

Fronsac considered the fickle King he served, surely absorbed by other pleasures and intrigues in his absence; the gentlemen of his acquaintance, all unquestionably climbing over each other in their eagerness for the smallest token of royal favor; his sister, married some years back to a Baron twenty years her senior and a silent recipient of his letters, apart from an exchange of hollow platitudes on Christmas; and Marcelle, a figure of rose hues and lavender-scented madeleines in the mist of his memory, despite the bitterness of her eventual deceit.

Heated puffs of their breath skittered across the chill ridges of their noses and cheek bones above the line of their thin scarves, and as he breathed in that shared breath Fronsac wished he had some richer intimacy, some greater secret to reveal there in the sheltered embrace of dusk. But he had only the truth, so he stated simply, “No one.”

A Lone Wolf Will Travel Great Distances to Find Another of its Kind

Thin walls, scant heat, and narrow beds presented significant challenges, but none too great to deter two men accustomed to army tents and encampments. Stretched out on their sides beneath a pile of blankets, they watched each other’s faces as their hidden fingers charted the familiar cartography of each other’s desire. Yet, even with Mani’s touch trailing a tingling path of growing need from the hollow of his throat down the length of his sternum, Fronsac could not empty his mind of apprehension. Rather, with his fingers spanning the curve of Mani’s ribs to cradle every rhythmic breath in and out, the ecstasy of this closeness grew impossibly fragile in the face of his fears. Frowning in contemplation, Fronsac stilled. “Why?” he asked, brow creased in inopportune puzzlement.

Mani chuckled incredulously and beneath the covers his touch grew bolder. “If you can ask after all this time, then I have been committing a grave error.”

Fronsac closed his eyes and hummed low in appreciation, replying, “No, in this matter you’ve been entirely clear.” Regretfully he reached between them to still the caress, and continued, “Why did you trust me? Why did you save me? Why did you come with me?” Mani shook his head at the obstinate resurfacing of themes he’d long since laid to rest, but sketched gold and grey by the lamplight Fronsac looked oddly delicate, so he summoned patience and smoothed Fronsac’s lined forehead with kisses. Calmly he explained, “For the same reason that you trusted me – that you knew a single life would slake my vengeance.”

Fronsac shook his head in denial, “Perhaps I did not know, and merely cared not whether I or the company lived or died.”

Mani snorted in dismayed astonishment, and he placed his free hand over Fronsac’s mouth, saying “I cannot allow such sentiments.” His hand below slipped from Fronsac’s grip and wound its way unerringly to Fronsac’s cock. Mani felt Fronsac’s lips part against his palm on a gasp and smirked, only to feel the damp swath of a lick in retaliation. He brought the hand to his own mouth and ran his tongue across it, tasting spirits and starlight, then brought the wet palm down, brushing against their puckered nipples, taut muscles, and the mirrored dip of their navels, to encircle their cocks in moist heat. Fronsac’s lips opened again, either to moan or speak, but Mani surged forward to smother the sounds.

He would have no more of doubt between them, and no more of regret. Perhaps there would still be bittersweet remembrance, but not here, not now. So he kissed and thrust with abandon, trapping Fronsac’s wandering hands and restless tongue until his companion could do nothing but quake wordlessly. When at last Fronsac’s pleading eyes lost all sense of urgency, and his heaving chest surrendered itself to Mani’s teasing rhythm, Mani relinquished Fronsac’s lips to nibble meandering messages of desire along his neck to be read again and again in reminiscence, while his thumbs and hips slid feverishly to the united beating of their hearts. Fronsac came, still and silent, and Mani quickly followed, pressing their foreheads together while they shook and quivered in languorous delight.

As they shifted and settled into sleep Mani whispered, “Don’t you know by now that wolves always recognize their own kind?”

“Perhaps I merely enjoy being reminded,” Fronsac replied, and his smile pressed into Mani’s shoulder. Lulled by the slowly rocking ship, they fell into a dreamless sleep, gliding inexorably further from the past and toward the horizon of their new life, together.


End file.
